“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
—George Santayana

Shortly after 9/11, then-President George W. Bush was unequivocal in his explanation as to why the terrorists did what they did: “They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.”* Fast-forward to 2015, and President Barack H. Obama was equally certain about the motivations of the Charlie Hebdo shooters: “The fact that this was an attack on journalists, [an] attack on our free press, also underscores the degree to which these terrorists fear freedom—of speech and freedom of the press.”* Add to that what I’ve read in the for-profit media—everyone from The New Yorker to Vox to Slate appears to be on the same page here—and one would be tempted to conclude that Bush and Barack are right. After all, virtually every piece I’ve read in the aftermath of the attacks has come down to some variation of this: “We need to defend Free Speech in the face of barbarism.”

And in the spirit of freedom of expression, let me say this: that analysis is bullshit and dead-wrong. Terrorists do not do what they do because they hate freedom—they do what they do because they are incredibly angry at Western violence. Let me explain. If terrorists were motivated to act because they hate freedom so much, one would expect to see terrorist activity all over the place where people live in (relative) freedom. But the reality is that Argentinians, Brazilians, Chileans, Mexicans, South Africans, Czechs, the Japanese, and a whole bunch of other folk enjoy the same relative freedoms that Americans and the French do, yet they do not live in perennial fear of a terrorist attack. Why is that? If the terrorists hate freedom so much and are willing to kill because of their hatred of freedom, then why do they seem to focus their activities against the US, the UK, Canada, France, Israel, and a few select other places? Is it because Americans just have that much more freedom than the Japanese?

Of course not.

The answer is that terrorists target those countries because those countries are precisely the ones that are engaging in military activity throughout the Muslim and Arab world. And that, dear reader, is why the terrorists do what they do. They don’t hate freedom—they hate what they perceive to be gross injustices happening against their homelands and to their people (whether you agree with them is beside the point). While of course we can disagree with their sentiments and their methods—to confirm, I condemn violence of all types—there can be no doubt that terrorist activity, at its root, stems from perceived injustices committed by the West in Muslim and Arab lands. Indeed, the killers themselves tell us that all the time. For example, Chérif Kouachi, one of the shooters in the Charlie Hebdo massacre, said exactly that six years ago. As noted in this long-form piece from Der Spiegel: “During [Chérif’s] trial in 2008, he said he had been radicalized by the images of Abu Ghraib.” It’s worth reading that line again. Chérif may have chosen to target Charlie Hebdo for any number of reasons—perhaps because they were on an al-Qaeda hit list, perhaps not—but there can be no doubt that he was radicalized by what happened at Abu Ghraib.

It’s crucial to remember that radicalization is what turned Chérif from a guy who “smoked marijuana [and] listened to rap music and described himself as an ‘occasional Muslim’” into a ruthless killer who shouted “Allahu Akbar!” as he fled the scene of a massacre he committed. In short, Chérif may have targeted the offices of a satirical newspaper, but the work of that satirical newspaper was not what initially propelled him to feel the need to resort to violence. Instead, what radicalized him—in his own words—were the images of Abu Ghraib.

And in the spirit of freedom of expression, I am publishing some of the Abu Ghraib photos here, even though they are certain to offend some people. There can be no doubt that these photos—and the underlying actions they depict, of course—offended at least one of the Charlie Hebdo shooters to the point of uncontrollable rage, radicalization, and a desire to kill. Obviously, we may—and do—disagree with the course of action they selected in response to their rage, but my main point still stands: that doesn’t mean I have to pretend these attacks happen because of a generalized and diffuse mantra of “they hate our freedoms.”

That line of reasoning simply makes no sense.

And by lying to ourselves in the wake of these attacks—by reaffirming our commitment to Free Speech, by praising Charlie Hebdo’s latest cover as a bold act of defiance, etc.—we only perpetuate the endless cycle of terrorist attack followed by increased surveillance followed by foreign military adventures followed by terrorist attack (repeat ad nauseam). That’s because, by misleadingly focusing on free speech, we never bother to think about the actual reasons terrorists do what they do.  If and until we understand why terrorists do what they do, however, we’ll never be able to stop them. As Green Greenwald has previously noted in The Guardian, terrorists offer the same motive again & again for what they do: “they emphatically all say the same thing: that they were motivated by the continuous, horrific violence brought by the US and its allies to the Muslim world—violence which routinely kills and oppresses innocent men, women and children.”

But that’s the one thing the West refuses to talk about after any terrorist attack. Instead, we wrap ourselves in issues of Charlie Hebdo, shouting “Free Speech!” and carrying a pencil as we run through the Avenue des Champs-Élysées as if that will solve everything (or anything). Such acts may make us feel warm and fuzzy on the inside, but in reality such acts turn us into mindless robots chanting government-approved slogans—Free Speech! Je Suis Charlie!—without ever bothering to think about the victims of Western violence in the Muslim and Arab world that are at the root cause of terrorism. And because we never think about such victims—the US drone strike that killed at least 12 people at a wedding in Yemen, the eight other wedding parties the US has bombed since 2001, the child the US held in Guantanamo for years on end, etc.—they remain out of sight and out of mind. The same issues that can radicalize some folk, then, are the very same issues that the West refuses to think about. There are no rallies in the West in solidarity with the thousands of innocents who have been killed as a result of Western military action in the Muslim and Arab world, there are no protests in solidarity with the men illegally held at Guantanamo with no end in sight, and there is no mass movement honoring the memory of those whose life was cut short by American drones.

And so the endless cycle seems set to continue. Terrorists get angry—men like Chérif get radicalized—by Western military action in the Middle East, they themselves then turn to violence, and the West responds by shouting “They hate our freedoms!” while simultaneously ignoring the (long) trail of blood & tears that follows Western drones and missiles. Already, steps have been made for an increase in surveillance in both the US and the UK in response to the Charlie Hebdo shootings. Already, the West has decided—nay, affirmed & shouted—that we will not think about the men in Guantanamo. We will not think about CIA extraordinary rendition, US-sponsored torture, etc. We will not think about what it must be like to have your whole family killed at a wedding. We will not think about the ramifications of widespread NSA surveillance. Instead, ever the self-appointed Shining City on a Hill, the West will refuse self-reflection and will march forward totally unconcerned with its actions outlined above, and it will focus solely on the barbarity of the terrorists & its (professed) love for free speech.

We’ve already seen where this gets us, and to alter an old saying slightly: only an idiot would do the same thing again but expect different results. It seems to me we have two options moving forward. We can embrace more surveillance—at the expense of our civil liberties—in the (misguided) hope that state security services & cartoonists’ pencils will stop terrorism. (Spoiler alert: they won’t). In the alternative, we can try to understand the actual reasons why terrorists do what they do and then ask ourselves: Can we reduce the number of innocents killed by drones? Can we not hold men in detention indefinitely? Can we not torture people? Can we not embrace extraordinary rendition? In short, can we not use surveillance, bombs, and torture to “solve” our problems? Perhaps that will do something to curb terrorism once and for all. Until then, however, peace seems to me a dream deferred.